Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Since the BP oil spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, over six million gallons of oil have poured into the water. Now you can see what’s happening firsthand on YouTube, through a live stream of the leak on PBS NewsHour’s YouTube channel. Today, BP will begin their “top kill” procedure, which will attempt to drill mud into the well to block the flowing oil. Thanks to the urging of Congress, you’ll be able to witness the entire process in real-time on YouTube.

Now that you can see what’s going on, PBS and YouTube want you to submit your best ideas, via Google Moderator, on how to stop this environmental catastrophe. PBS NewsHour will air some of the top YouTube submissions in their broadcast tomorrow evening and online:

Many of you have already come up with creative solutions on how to stop the leak or clean up the spill, and you’re using video to make these ideas come to life. Here are a few innovative examples:

Tune in to the live stream here, and if you have ideas you think BP should hear, submit them before 5 p.m. (ET) tomorrow.

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Use the weight of a long rod hanging in the well to seal a plug at the top of the blowout preventer. Cut the pipe at the top of the blowout preventer and insert a long rod with a plug at the top of it. The rod is long enough to supply the forces needed to seal the well. A rod at 1/3rd the diameter of the well (should be small enough to insert into the gushing hole) would have to hang down a mile to generate a 2000 psi seal at the blowout preventer. If the rod could be ½ the diameter of the well, it would only have to hang about ½ a mile down to generate 2000 psi. It’s pretty simple to try. They are cutting the top off the preventer anyway. It’s low risk too, and I’m sure the materials are readily available.

Probably the riser pipe is putting a large horizontal force on the top of the BOP. (As it collapsed and bent, the final force could be in a net push or pull direction.) This may be distorting the BOP structure enough to prevent valve operation.2 ideas: 1: depending on the force direction, push or pull, select the regions of the riser pipe to begin a series of shallow cuts to weaken the pipe wall so that it will begin to fold in a controlled crimp and thus seriously reduce the oil exit flows. Then re-perform the top-kill.(if controlled kinking did not work, be cautious since the breaking pipe could damage robots if pipe moves quickly under a fracture)

2: be prepared to reattempt to close the existing BOP valves after the pipe has been cut completely, since there will be no further push/pull side loads. (hoping no plastic deformation occured, or that top kill junk is not blocking piston action.)

I believe that if you had a fitting based on the Chinese Finger Hand Cuff idea that when you pull, it tightened against the tube, you could send down a pipe with one end in place and when you pull back, it would tighten and form a tight bond that would hold the oil in place. One the other end of the tube that you are installing there would be a shut off valve that could be shut off or vented to the surface. Of course, it would be on a much larger scale.

Cut off the oil pipe about 4 fett obove the blow out preventer. Make a large self thread tapping fixture that has a conical feed into it with at least of a foot of a straight bore and then the tread tapping portion at the small end of the conical feed.Attach the treading fixture to a drill pipe. Lower the entire assembly onto the cut off leaking pipe having the conical end of the fixture guiding it into the straight bore & threading end of the fixture. Revolve the drill pipe, threading the cut off leaking pipe & sealing the Leak with a new Drill Pipe.James L Fischerjlfischer1@verizon.net

What I believe will absorb the oil is toothpaste. Since toothpaste absorbs oil well on your face and even on water because I tested it. You should create a ring or circle around the oil or one part of the oil. The ring around will be real real thick toothpaste to keep it from moving and spreading. And dip a thick tube of toothpaste inside it and you will be amazed of what will happen.

What would happen if you inserted several small tubes into the oil pipe that you could then flood with liquid nitrogen?One would think that a temperature of absolute zero, preferably as deep as you could get them in the pipe, would stem and then, perhaps, stop the flow.Sounds like a job for the US Navy...

It looks like there are about six bolt holes on the flange below where the pipe is leaking. If we could fabricate a piece with the same amount of holes and build it the same diameter of the existing flange. Only leave two holes small enough where we could loosen two existing bolts in the old flange and put longer bolts through the existing flange and our new fitting, and also make a new gasket to fit. After tightening the new flange us c-clamps to go around the rest of the flange and try to get it tightened as evenly as possible. On the top of our new piece we would need a valve. When installing the valve it would need to be open to withstand the pressure of the oil. After getting our new valve secured we could shut the valve and stop the leak or at least slow it down. Just an idea...

Hi my name is darrell. i have the fix for the oil pipe, i can show 5 way's 2 make devices that you can use to cap and reuse. all i need is to speak to someone, one to 2 weeks it can be done. my # 954-326-0961

Hi I am Dmitriy, I am not working with oil, but I got only one idea why not to get the bigger sleeve and try go around the existing pipe and have vent sticking out above the water surface and so all the leaks has go in side out-side skin which you will be able to control in out side surface and it will be illuminate the small leaks in side to water call me with more info 425-330-1291

There needs to be a secondary cover over the one put in place yesterday. Similar to a cup inside anothwe cup. The secondaey cup would capture the oil which get through the inital cup (using a vacuum line to equal the flow rate). The oil is only currently going a few feet below the current cup in place and that is how far the secondary cup would extend to capture the missed oil.

Cap is leaking badly (more oil/gas is being lost than recovered IMHO). Here is an idea to seal it properly (no seal in present cap or seal is doing no good), use explosively fired "vice grip" (see Irwin Vice Grip operation principle) mechanism to fire 5 or 6 clamping segments into remaining stub of pipe to clamp cap bottom edge effectively to stub. This will reduce leakage much more effectively than the loose fitting cap that is in place currently. Our environment deserves the innovation which will prevent further damage to this fragile earth of ours. Pray for us (the human race). Regards, Bob

Here is a suggestion on a method to stop the leak long enough to repair the pipe: Take a large "Internal Bladder" allow it to flow through the pipe with the oil until you are close to the break then inflate the bladder (similar to an Angioplasty"). This should allow time to repair the break in the line. To slow the pressure build up behind the bladder control it from the end of line that can be accessed decreasing the pressure to allow the bladder to hold back the oil long enough to repair the line.Comment made by Bob Johnson from Mineral Point, Pa.

If a long heavy rod can be inserted straight into the open well shaft a variant to consider would be to try to lodge the rod in the pipe as an obstruction using explosives and spines.

If for instance a 100 foot rod can be inserted straight into the pipe (under it’s own weight if heavy enough and streamlined), then attach flush with the rod some explosive spines that are attached to the rod. The spines could be attached to the rod itself or attached by cables. If cables are used, build a small net of interconnecting cables to catch debris coming up from below. Use two explosive sites, one near the top of the rod, and one at the middle. Set the explosions off at the same time to drive the rods into the well casing walls. Put some knobby bulb shapes, or grappling hooks on the spine ends to anchor the spines into the wall when the explosions go off. The spines should act like a piton does when rock climbers attach to a rock wall.

Use 8 or 12 spines at each site to help insure that some good anchors are formed.

Build into the lower half of the rod some positive buoyancy pieces that can detach. Wood might work, but someone who knows the affects of the pressure at that depth could recommend the best material to use. Let there be about 200 pieces of buoyant materials that can get caught by the cable webbing and the anchor spines. Attach some of the buoyant pieces together with short cables to help them catch the netting above. The bigger and cabled together pieces should be higher on the rod than the smallest pieces. The bigger pieces will catch on to the netting first and the smaller pieces will fill in the gaps.

Run some detonation cord down to the buoyant pieces to make sure they separate at the time of the explosion.

When the explosion goes off, the rod gets anchored securely to the walls and the netting deploys. The buoyant materials come up with the rising oil and get stuck against the webbing, and the oil leak may become almost completely blocked as a result. Finish with a top kill.

If the rod is long enough and heavy enough to fall under it’s own weight, it might be best to let the anchoring occur 1000 feet or so below the surface so that the oil doesn’t have a good path through the damaged pipe to rise to the surface.

I suggest lowering down 2 pipes - one larger that would go over the current leaky pipe and one smaller that would go inside. The larger piping will have material like concrete and would create a seal around the smaller pipe and the existing pipe. I have a graphic - I wish i could upload it

BP Please Read This***The simple solution to the problem is to (1) Remove flange just below where the pipe was cut off (2) Install a double shutoff valve in the open position to the lower pipe flange. (3) Once the shutoff is secure, begin to slowly close the valves. (4) Once closed, attach the distribution pipe to the top of the valve. (5) Once installed, slowly open the valves, and collect ("ALL, yes ALL")of the oil coming up the pipe. (6) Throw away all those golf balls, plastic toys, and other miscellaneous junk that your engineers decided to plug the pipe with, and discard that silly worthless cone. Is this the best that those high paying engineers can come up with? "THIS IS SCARY". When it is time to hand out all of those multi-million bonus checks to the CEOs and all of the so-called executives, I hope they think about all of the people whose were ruined because of this, and the enviroment that you completely destroyed for years to come. All of this because you decided to operate a unsafe well and thought that you were exempt from all the safety violations that you were made aware of. *****(This is not to complicated)***If you are unable to handle this, then contract it out. We cannot wait another 4 or 5 months for a fix. GET-ER-DONE!

SIMPLY UNBOLT THE REMAINING PIPE AND CONNECTING FLANGE FROM THE PIPE FLANGE AT THE TOP OF THE BOP. THEN BOLT A HIGH-PRESSURE GATE-VALVE (OR BALL-VALVE) TO THE BOP FLANGE. MAKE SURE THAT THE VALVE IS IN THE OPEN POSITON WHILE THE VALVE IS BEING BOLTED TO THE BOP FLANGE. ONCE THE GATE VALVE (OR BALL VALVE) IS BOLTED TO THE BOP FLANGE, SIMPLY CLOSE THE VALVE TO COMPLETELY STOP THE LEAK ONCE AND FOR ALL.

Yea, that old John Wayne Movie about Red Adair fighting oil well fires showed exactly what several of the above comments have made - unbolt and remove the top flange, bolt a valve in the open position on the bottom flange, slowly close the valve. Problem solved. However, several things to consider: can the robots screw nuts and bolts? Can the damaged BOP handle the full pressure of the well? Seems to me that if the two answers are Yes, they should go for it.

Ever step on your garden hose to stop flow? Ever KINK your hose to stop flow? All this blather and yap with fancy ways to stop the leak...plugs cryogenics, sleeves, domes, collars, etc. If the leaking pipe is at all malliable, build a hydraulic clamp, push it around the pipe and squeeze a kink into it. Done. RWA, NSB, Florida

a round dome has to be lowered over leaking oil pipe. connected to the dome will be a threaded neck where the high pressure hose attaches. at the bottom of dome will be a hard rubber seal. there will have to be four sealable ports so when lowered it will sink, once sunk these ports will be closed. the high pressure hose will be attached to a platform up top. once dome is lowered and ports closed and hose anchored up top. then the oil tankers can pump oil to there tankers. after dome is in place and water bleeds out from sealed dome, it will be all crude oil, no water. then we can start the clean up once and for all. glen / portage, in

I think there is a better way to fix the oil leak. Very simply send a very heavy rubber tube like a pumber stop down the tube with ruff edges. I have a diagram of if you are interested contact me at budgetunlimited@yahoo.com thank you this sould work. thanks Willie Morris

install a lond spear like object that is perperated with a holes and is hallow. As the long tapered spear is inserted perassure is deverted from arrouond the side of the spear like object and beging flowing through the holes and out the hallow spear that can have a series of valves that are attatched above the tapered spear. Once the spear is as wide as the inside diameter of the well, the oil can collect or capped. The pressure beign relieved through the holes in the long spear inserted in the pipe will allow for it to be secured to the out side of the well pipe. To secure the spear object there should be a collar with a sleeve that goes aropund the outside diameter of the pipe.

How about going back to the first top hat. Install steam lines at peak of top hat to prevent icing up of top hat. Insert a 12" to 18" flange to one side, a few feet from the peak with a gate valve that can be closed later. At peak of top hat install another flange and gate valve of the size needed to hook up to oil tankers or rigs. Close valve at peak and leave valve on side in open position. Set top hat over leak, while steam is applied to prevent ice build up. Once top hat is in place with oil diverted out side opening hook up piping to peak of top hat. Open valve at top and close valve on side. Oil would then be diverted to piping for loading on ships or barges.

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